THE UNREST IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9104, 2 June 1908, Page 4

THE UNREST IN AMERICA.

The dim forces of an international discontent, making itself manifest in an international upheaval, are working steadily throughout the world for the re-pdjustment of the old party loyalties. And this upheaval is being manifested in its hardest form in America, where feudal obligations and long-past tradition make no stand between the predatory forces of capi tal and the predatory forces of labour. And the progress of affairs seems steadily drifting towards a period of violence and change. No one in that continent believes that large fortunes are made honestly. Misery festers, angry and impotent, in the neglected quarters of the great cities. The avenues of success are being choked and impeded by the artificial barricades of those who have already attained. And a wide unrest and discontent at the failure of dreams once radiant and ambitions turned all awry is exciting a spirit of revolt amongst the masses of the people. The commercial crisis has given rise to wide exhibition of unemployment; but the dissatisfaction goes far deeper than any of these variable currents of monthly or yearly variation. It is the slow drifting of millions of the neglected manual labourers into the conviction that they are being cajoled or cheated out of what is their right reward, combined with the determination, more and more rising to articulate utterance, that by means, if possible legitimate, but in any case effective, that reward shall be obtained.